data

I typically have the phone connected to 4G and wireless with Bluetooth turned off. I haven’t installed many apps lately, in fact I have un-installed apps that I have not been using. A quick check of my battery usage did not provide any helpful indication as to why the battery would be draining quickly either.

The only solution that I could find that simply did not involve turning other features off (LTE, location, Bluetooth, Wifi, Background sync etc) was as follows:

The need for a new phone, the lack of Windows 10 Mobile hardware on any carriers, and the need to switch carriers saw me waving goodbye to Windows 10 Mobile yesterday. And so, I found myself in the position of needing to move my data from Microsoft services to Android / Google.

To backup my SMS messages from my Microsoft Account I used the WP Message Backup app from the Windows Store on my Windows 10 PC. The app will backup 100 messages for free. I did not check the cost of backing up 10,000 messages (as I had more than that) and so I opted for unlimited which cost $5.49.

The app is easy to use – select Windows Phone 8.x or Windows Phone 10 and then sign in to your Microsoft Account. If you have a lot of messages it will take quite some time to populate.

When the app has finished loading your message click the List button.

Click the Select All button (if you want to export all messages) otherwise manually check messages in the list and then click the Save button.

Click the Android (xml) radio button. Before you export you will need to review the number of messages you need to export vs the free and paid options that the app offers. I paid for unlimited message export. Click the Export button and then save your .xml file to your PC.

WP Message Backup did throw up an error message at the end of my export and notified me that 288 messages could not be saved. I wasn’t too worried about it – I still had over 11,000 messages successfully exported.

I transferred the .xml file to my phone using USB – you could use cloud storage if you prefer.

On my phone I installed SMS Back & Restore to import my messages. It took a little while, and the Messaging app was a little flaky while I went through and weeded out all the junk. All things considered the migration was a success!